Google plans to integrate information on your current activities and those of your friends into its Search page, giving users insight into what peers are doing and by so doing Google is linking Google+ more closely with Google’s other offerings.
On Tuesday, Google took that a step further. Seth Sternberg said at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York “When we launched Google+, we said it was all about making Google one Google, a user has a common identity throughout Google and a common way to share things and interact with friends…Now we’re making it easy to discover what other people are doing around the Internet when they’re doing a search on Google.”
How the integration works is a user visiting an app signs in using his or her Google account. With the user’s permission, the person’s activities are sent to Google from the app and site. Google aggregates all of those activities and identifies what’s popular. It then shows those results on the righthand side of its search page when a user looks up that brand.
For example, someone searching for Fandango will see what movies currently are the most popular, someone looking up SoundCloud will see what’s popular and trending at that time.
The new feature will launch on desktop Search in a few weeks, Sternberg said. Initial partners include Deezer, Fandango, Flixster, Slacker Radio, Songza, SoundCloud, and TuneIn. Google noted that it will add more apps over time.
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